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pretty sure the value of the Forgotten Realms as a setting is that it is generic enough and broad enough that you can take whatever bits and pieces you choose from it to flesh out your individual tabletop campaigns. like, you're supposed to alter it to suit whatever's going on in your group at the moment and yeah, Ziets and Saunders were the lead writer and producer on Mask. Avellone wrote Gann and Kaelyn
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Sep 17, 2019 03:42
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psudonym55 posted:I vastly disagree. I think that is the way she likes to play it/wants it to appear. She's a very evil person who just wants you to think she's being forced into it. This is actually really interesting, because I had no idea about this, but apparently it only comes out in banters between Hexxat and Aerie that Hexxat is sneaking out and killing innocents. So yeah, they kind of buried it, but Hexxat is a lot more sinister than I thought.
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Sep 17, 2019 03:42
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sweet geek swag posted:This is actually really interesting, because I had no idea about this, but apparently it only comes out in banters between Hexxat and Aerie that Hexxat is sneaking out and killing innocents. So yeah, they kind of buried it, but Hexxat is a lot more sinister than I thought. Huh, that is pretty interesting yeah. Also a bit tonally dissonant with her overall arc. She’s a serial killer but also on a big long quest to regain her mortality so she can die mortal? The former is a little out of left field in the context of the latter.
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Sep 17, 2019 03:49
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I think the thing with Hexxat is that she is completely unapologetic about what she is and what she needs, but she doesn't want to be or need those things. So she tries to hide the fact that she is still feeding on people but when called on it she is incredibly forthright about it.
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Sep 17, 2019 03:54
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Lt. Danger posted:pretty sure the value of the Forgotten Realms as a setting is that it is generic enough and broad enough that you can take whatever bits and pieces you choose from it to flesh out your individual tabletop campaigns. like, you're supposed to alter it to suit whatever's going on in your group at the moment The FR has a lot of distinctly interesting stuff poorly presented by at this point a decade of bad setting books written with little actual care for the setting. You’re right I was wrong to assume MotB was Avellone’s fault, but it being Ziets’ doesn’t make it any better. It’s still a badly written game for the wrong setting. NWN2 itself fit the Realms pretty well, I don’t know why they had to go so far off base for the expansion.
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Sep 17, 2019 04:00
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what the gently caress is this tablet XII poo poo. enkidu loving died five tablets ago, how can he be alive again suddenly? respect the canon, sumerians
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Sep 17, 2019 04:07
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Forgotten Realms cannot fail, only be failed.
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Sep 17, 2019 08:55
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Arivia posted:You’re right I was wrong to assume MotB was Avellone’s fault, but it being Ziets’ doesn’t make it any better. It’s still a badly written game for the wrong setting. NWN2 itself fit the Realms pretty well, I don’t know why they had to go so far off base for the expansion. The really funny thing about Mask of the Betrayer is that how that game portrays the Wall of the Faithless isn't how the Wall works in the tabletop fluff. Almost every single one of Kaelyn's objections to the Wall is answered by tabletop fluff - you really have to actively work to get sentenced to the Wall, no one in the tabletop goes there who didn't choose that fate in full knowledge of what it means.
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Sep 17, 2019 12:23
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a setting should facilitate compelling dramatic problems: ideally problems that bear some relation to the history of meaningful human experience. making the wall of the faithless a problem makes it communicable with some of the great problems in the history of religious experience. the christian cosmology had a number of similar 'holes' that allowed great injustices to slip through: such the eternal damnation of infants before baptism and of the greek philosophers before the revelation of christ. this great scandal of the unjustness of the universe motivated many a heretic and early secularist. it was a problem big enough to give dante pause and to provide one of the great thematics in dostoevsky's brothers karamozov. it was an important impetus behind the great european wars of religion. motb develops a brilliantly nuanced allegorical engagement with this issue and the magnitude with which it could confront people living in a religious universe. now: what sort of similar dramatic accomplishments does the nwn2 oc have to boast of? how well does it stack up? Zane fucked around with this message at 17:38 on Sep 17, 2019 |
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Sep 17, 2019 17:33
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I've always found the forgotten realms to be quite stuffy, although my experience of it is pretty much limited to the infinite engine games, neverwinter nights and reading wikis. Obvious jokey stuff aside, everyone seems to take themselves quite seriously and the alignment system sucks poo poo.
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Sep 17, 2019 17:46
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Zane posted:now: what sort of similar dramatic accomplishments does the nwn2 oc have to boast of? how well does it stack up? Sure: the King of Shadows is an allegory for revanchism as a source of cultural conflict, which is a more widely understandable theme across the world and does not depend on specific versions of Catholic theology. That a defense mechanism put in place by a long dead culture continues to cause suffering also has continuing relevance, both physically in the form of landmines and metaphorically in the transmission of dangerous ideas. I'm not being entirely serious of course, but it's possible to look at just about any creative work and see potentially interesting connections. The difference is in how well you feel it's done.
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Sep 17, 2019 19:01
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neverwinter nights 1 and 2 are unplayable in 2019 because you cant sheathe your weapons, same for kotor. tho for some reason it doesnt bother me in infinity engine games because i like the sprite art
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Sep 17, 2019 19:05
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Promethium posted:Sure: the King of Shadows is an allegory for revanchism as a source of cultural conflict, which is a more widely understandable theme across the world and does not depend on specific versions of Catholic theology. That a defense mechanism put in place by a long dead culture continues to cause suffering also has continuing relevance, both physically in the form of landmines and metaphorically in the transmission of dangerous ideas. honestly when it comes to my D&D elfgames I'm not very concerned with searches for greater meaning, I just want elves to get stabbed and characters to level up. I'm concerned with setting and thematic consistency (which MotB fails at), but I'm not particularly looking to do a close reading for a critical viewpoint. Arivia fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Sep 17, 2019 |
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Sep 17, 2019 20:21
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I loved NWN Mask of the Betrayer and I loved the big fluffy rainbow polar bear also. He was good.
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Sep 17, 2019 20:24
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Forgotten Realms isn't consistent in the first place, so if it takes ignoring a couple of lore tidbits hidden in some obscure splatbook to make for a more engaging experience, I'll personally take it. I mean, the look, tone and concerns of every single videogame set in the Forgotten Realms is different from the others.
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Sep 17, 2019 20:34
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Fair Bear Maiden posted:Forgotten Realms isn't consistent in the first place, so if it takes ignoring a couple of lore tidbits hidden in some obscure splatbook to make for a more engaging experience, I'll personally take it. I mean, the look, tone and concerns of every single videogame set in the Forgotten Realms is different from the others. This just makes consistency problems worse, you realize? The better option is to actually work through the source material and work to be consistent with that, instead of going off half-cocked and thinking you can do it better.
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Sep 17, 2019 20:37
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Arivia posted:This just makes consistency problems worse, you realize? The better option is to actually work through the source material and work to be consistent with that, instead of going off half-cocked and thinking you can do it better. It's true, the Forgotten Realms people should really have tried to be more consistent with the superior source material of Mask of the Betrayer, inventing time travel to do so if necessary.
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Sep 17, 2019 20:43
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Out of curiosity what were the consistency problems it had with the setting. What did it do that went against canon. (I never played MotB.)Cythereal posted:The really funny thing about Mask of the Betrayer is that how that game portrays the Wall of the Faithless isn't how the Wall works in the tabletop fluff. Almost every single one of Kaelyn's objections to the Wall is answered by tabletop fluff - you really have to actively work to get sentenced to the Wall, no one in the tabletop goes there who didn't choose that fate in full knowledge of what it means. Well I imagine it was easier to get into the Wall and other torments when Myrkul was in charge.
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Sep 17, 2019 20:45
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Arivia posted:This just makes consistency problems worse, you realize? The better option is to actually work through the source material and work to be consistent with that, instead of going off half-cocked and thinking you can do it better. The source material isn’t consistent with itself. You have an arbitrary canon that only exists in your own head.
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Sep 17, 2019 20:48
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MonsterEnvy posted:Well I imagine it was easier to get into the Wall and other torments when Myrkul was in charge. Myrkul had very good contractors.
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Sep 17, 2019 20:49
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Captain Oblivious posted:The source material isn’t consistent with itself. You have an arbitrary canon that only exists in your own head. No, there was a lot of attention paid to consistency and trying to work out canonical issues from 1987 until the last 3e product was released in 2007. It was a change with 4e that Wizards really punted on trying to keep things consistent and actually keeping the Realms healthy as a setting. Even in 3e you had Rich Baker acting as a canon cop, even if he wasn't as good at it as James Lowder was. Were there issues? Sure. They're inevitable in any shared creative property, but you can resolve them by having dedicated people work those through and shape things into a whole. Those people were ultimately dismissed for the Realms, their contributions discarded, and things go downhill from there. @MonsterEnvy: The big problem is that the developers really wanted to tell this grand story about the immorality and tragedy of the Wall of the Faithless, this idea of being condemned to eternal torment just for not worshiping a god. In Christian theology, that's a good question; in the Realms, which has repeatedly relitigated the idea that the gods are animating the world and existence and are a necessary part of anything existing at all, it's ridiculously stupid. The game tries to illustrate this secret history just to argue a theological question that doesn't fit the setting at all, where the gods are provably real and necessary, where the Wall has already been torn down and everything went to poo poo because of that.
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Sep 17, 2019 20:58
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THS posted:neverwinter nights 1 and 2 are unplayable in 2019 because you cant sheathe your weapons, same for kotor. tho for some reason it doesnt bother me in infinity engine games because i like the sprite art There are many other reasons for NWN2 being unplayable. Fun as hell 3rd DnD adventure but going in blind you will probably completely gently caress up your character and encounter multiple game ending bugs. Still love having to make a new save file every time because of the bug where a save file gets too large and won't load the overworld map anymore.
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Sep 17, 2019 21:03
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Arivia posted:@MonsterEnvy: The big problem is that the developers really wanted to tell this grand story about the immorality and tragedy of the Wall of the Faithless, this idea of being condemned to eternal torment just for not worshiping a god. In Christian theology, that's a good question; in the Realms, which has repeatedly relitigated the idea that the gods are animating the world and existence and are a necessary part of anything existing at all, it's ridiculously stupid You've got cause and effect backwards here. They wanted to tell a grand story about Christian-like theology, and then used the Wall of the Faithless as an allegory for it. Which works fine in the game.
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Sep 17, 2019 21:04
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Promethium posted:Sure: the King of Shadows is an allegory for revanchism as a source of cultural conflict, which is a more widely understandable theme across the world and does not depend on specific versions of Catholic theology. That a defense mechanism put in place by a long dead culture continues to cause suffering also has continuing relevance, both physically in the form of landmines and metaphorically in the transmission of dangerous ideas. my motb reading is, comparatively, a fairly strong one because all the characters and all the plots contend in interrelated ways with the metaphysical constitution of the universe -- and the crisis of how it has been unjustly constituted. the spirit eater, the wall of the faithless, the love of the founder. these issues are all engaged through quite densely rendered internal characterizations and external disagreements that furthermore have a good deal of demonstrable resonance with recurrent historical concerns. what is most successful and nuanced about this allegory is that there is more than one justifiable disposition towards these issues and that there is no easy solution for everyone. Zane fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Sep 18, 2019 |
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Sep 17, 2019 21:05
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pentyne posted:Fun as hell 3rd DnD adventure but going in blind you will probably completely gently caress up your character That's just being true to the source material though.
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Sep 17, 2019 21:12
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MrL_JaKiri posted:You've got cause and effect backwards here. They wanted to tell a grand story about Christian-like theology, and then used the Wall of the Faithless as an allegory for it. Which works fine in the game. Yeah no they can gently caress right off with that. If you’re doing a licensed game do the license justice, don’t jam in your own theological inquiry and force the license to fit you. MotB would have been fine if it wasn’t an FR game, but it’s a lovely FR game.
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Sep 17, 2019 21:13
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Nah, MoTB is a fine Forgotten Realms game. It's got all the classes and has prestige classes and swords and a polarrainbowbear and none of this is poo poo worth getting upset about. Story-wise, it was also super solid and I enjoyed it as an epic conclusion to my Knight-Captain's tale.
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Sep 17, 2019 21:15
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Arivia posted:No, there was a lot of attention paid to consistency and trying to work out canonical issues from 1987 until the last 3e product was released in 2007. It was a change with 4e that Wizards really punted on trying to keep things consistent and actually keeping the Realms healthy as a setting. Even in 3e you had Rich Baker acting as a canon cop, even if he wasn't as good at it as James Lowder was. This is a lot of words to say I'm right but that you don't like it and try not to think about it.
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Sep 17, 2019 21:26
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I think, Arivia, and I mean no offense, that you're reading malicious intent in something that it'd be more productive to interpret neutrally. Ultimately, the difference between you and a lot of posters here is that you hold Forgotten Realms' lore in high regard, regardless of whether it's well-established, well-known lore or relatively unknown trivia, and you find the fact that the developers might have ignored that trivia for the big picture concept unconscionable and a sign of their disrespect for the property. Truth of the matter is, I'd be surprised if the developers *intentionally* ignored the lore, when even Wizard of the Coast approved their creative work on the expansion, and even if they did, I think it'd be understandable given that at most players will be aware of the concept of the Wall of Faithless and not of its exact specifics. For the record, I *have* been googling this, and all I could find where small tidbits from a 2e and a 3rd ed. sourcebook, neither of which confirm what Cythereal and Arivia are saying. I'm sure they are right, but I think this also points as to why the information was ignored in Mask of the Betrayer. It's not very well-known and it's not very relevant, and while I'm sure the developers researched things extensively, things *can* slip through. I mean, if something indeed slipped through, you have to consider that it didn't just slip through Obsidian's writers but also Wizards of the Coast, who had editorial control on the game (and used it to veto one of the companions being bisexual, according to Chris Avellone). As an aside... even if the Wall existed *exclusively* to punish people who specifically knew about it and still refused to worship the Gods... so what? Being against cosmic extortion is good IMO.
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Sep 17, 2019 21:42
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Arivia posted:Yeah no they can gently caress right off with that. If you’re doing a licensed game do the license justice, don’t jam in your own theological inquiry and force the license to fit you. MotB would have been fine if it wasn’t an FR game, but it’s a lovely FR game. Forgotten Realms was also constructed to be allegorical to real life stuff [edit] To put it another way: the lore should only exist insofar as it allows interesting stories to be told.
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Sep 17, 2019 21:43
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MrL_JaKiri posted:Forgotten Realms was also constructed to be allegorical to real life stuff Go ahead and support that statement. I don't disagree with treating the Realms as a pastiche, because that's what it is. It's meant to have relations to our world, but not actual significant Meanings through allegory.
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Sep 17, 2019 21:45
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Fair Bear Maiden posted:I think, Arivia, and I mean no offense, that you're reading malicious intent in something that it'd be more productive to interpret neutrally. So we know this isn't true (that the developers wouldn't have been aware) because when TSR/WotC had an actual product team for the Realms, one of their jobs was to research and send out information to people licensing stuff about the Realms. That would have included both published and unpublished material on the relevant parts of the setting, networking with past designers and writers, and so on. Obsidian deliberately chose to break from what they were given. There's no excuse for ignoring it, no matter how minor it might be. If you're doing it officially, for pay, do it right. WotC's editorial team in general has never really cared about preventing inconsistencies in the FR, which is why the designers and developers were always running catchup for their messes. The basic ethic behind the Wall is that simply being alive is a gift from the gods, and that as part of that bargain, mortals are required to worship. Cosmologically they're not living up to their part of the bargain.
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Sep 17, 2019 21:53
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Arivia posted:So we know this isn't true (that the developers wouldn't have been aware) because when TSR/WotC had an actual product team for the Realms, one of their jobs was to research and send out information to people licensing stuff about the Realms. That would have included both published and unpublished material on the relevant parts of the setting, networking with past designers and writers, and so on. Obsidian deliberately chose to break from what they were given. Cosmologically, the gods in the Forgotten Realms exist to serve the people of the Forgotten realms. Ao made this abundantly clear when he decided to make all the gods mortal during the time of troubles. The gods had failed, being more interested in their own petty desires over the good of their worshippers. And you know what? The universe didn't unravel without the gods in charge. Yeah, there was a lot of chaos during the time of troubles, but that was because you had mortal beings with godlike powers and giant cults worshipping them wandering around. The fact that the gods have failed their worshippers so entirely means that the gods haven't been living up to their end of the bargain. But that doesn't matter. Because the gods have all the power. So even if they aren't living up to their obligations, if you refuse to worship them, you go in the wall. In fact Kelemvor doing away with the wall can be seen as a direct result of the time of troubles. So maybe the wall of the faithless was just something that the gods came up with to punish those who defied them, and they justified it by saying it was an obligation, as if the gods don't routinely ignore their own obligations and requirements. And maybe Ao intentionally set events into motuon that destroyed the wall of the Faithless. Also you seem a bit unreasonable when your response to 'maybe they missed this obscure lore' is 'there is no excuse for missing any lore, no matter how small.'
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Sep 17, 2019 22:16
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sweet geek swag posted:Cosmologically, the gods in the Forgotten Realms exist to serve the people of the Forgotten realms. Ao made this abundantly clear when he decided to make all the gods mortal during the time of troubles. The gods had failed, being more interested in their own petty desires over the good of their worshippers. And you know what? The universe didn't unravel without the gods in charge. Yeah, there was a lot of chaos during the time of troubles, but that was because you had mortal beings with godlike powers and giant cults worshipping them wandering around. Okay so you’ve either read about half of the Avatar series or some synopses, because you’re obviously missing the rest of the background. The Wall of the Faithless was originally created by Myrkul, who was an absolute motherfucker of a god who didn’t care about mortals at all. Prior to the Avatar Crisis, no mortals knew about it (Midnight’s trip to the Fugue Plane was the first time it was seen.) Prior to the Avatar Crisis, the gods absolutely weren’t living up to their worshipers. That’s why the Avatar Crisis happened - Ao threw them all to Toril because they weren’t doing their jobs. Conversely, the Avatar Crisis ended when Ao whipped them all back into shape and set out to make them do it correctly, by tying a deity’s power and existence to the number of worshipers that deity had. Without their worshipers, the gods would wither, and after that the uncaring deities who left their worshipers to die (like now-dead Myrkul) were gone or dead soon after. Except Cyric. After the Avatar Crisis, Cyric ends up with death as a portfolio and doesn’t give a poo poo about actually carrying it out. He goes mad, death gets hosed up again, and the Faithless break out. It takes Ao intervening again to get Kelemvor resurrected and installed as the new God of Death. Kelemvor has just seen all this happen, knows the Wall is ethically terrible, but watches over it because he knows it is necessary for the Realms to survive. So that’s why MotB’s endings don’t work. They had already been tried and demonstrably failed. And yes, when you’re getting paid to do a product in a setting getting canon right is literally part of your job. Home games, fan stuff, totally excusable. Obsidian was getting paid to do MotB.
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Sep 17, 2019 22:42
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money isn’t real, neither is canon or the integrity of intellectual property
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Sep 17, 2019 22:44
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I dunno, if they came out with a Superman movie where he's a normal stock broker named Brandon Tolliver who is devoutly Catholic and gains superpowers when he bonds with an alien parasite hiding in a tube of tennis balls and spends the entire movie grappling with trying to do good, working in a soulless and soul crushing business, and with the theological implications of being granted these powers, it may be a fantastic movie but it's a poo poo Superman movie. Or look at Halloween 3. It's a drat fine movie, but attempting to transition to an anthology format after they'd established a formula in 1 and 2 resulted in such failure that that movie stands out among the franchise for having nothing to do with Michael Myers. If Baldur's Gate 3 turns out to be a King of Dragon Pass style strategy game, set around the Sea of Fallen Stars except the landmass is just the Flanaess and you're fighting off the forces of the Egg of Coot, it may be a perfectly fine game, but is it really a Forgotten Realms game? Is it even a Baldur's Gate game? Sure it's branded that way, but at that point does it mean anything? A desire for consistency is not some absurd request, it's one of the basic elements of being a fan of something. After all, you became a fan of that for a reason, and if they start changing things around willy-nilly you end up with 4E Forgotten Realms.
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Sep 17, 2019 23:15
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Arivia posted:After the Avatar Crisis, Cyric ends up with death as a portfolio and doesn’t give a poo poo about actually carrying it out. He goes mad, death gets hosed up again, and the Faithless break out. It takes Ao intervening again to get Kelemvor resurrected and installed as the new God of Death. Kelemvor has just seen all this happen, knows the Wall is ethically terrible, but watches over it because he knows it is necessary for the Realms to survive. Arivia posted:The basic ethic behind the Wall is that simply being alive is a gift from the gods, and that as part of that bargain, mortals are required to worship. Cosmologically they're not living up to their part of the bargain. Arivia posted:The big problem is that the developers really wanted to tell this grand story about the immorality and tragedy of the Wall of the Faithless, this idea of being condemned to eternal torment just for not worshiping a god. In Christian theology, that's a good question; in the Realms, which has repeatedly relitigated the idea that the gods are animating the world and existence and are a necessary part of anything existing at all, it's ridiculously stupid. Zane fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Sep 18, 2019 |
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Sep 17, 2019 23:28
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sweet geek swag posted:This is actually really interesting, because I had no idea about this, but apparently it only comes out in banters between Hexxat and Aerie that Hexxat is sneaking out and killing innocents. So yeah, they kind of buried it, but Hexxat is a lot more sinister than I thought. If you have Jan Jansen in your party their banters indicate that she has killed at least one of his nieces.
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Sep 18, 2019 00:04
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Arivia posted:Prior to the Avatar Crisis, the gods absolutely weren’t living up to their worshipers. That’s why the Avatar Crisis happened - Ao threw them all to Toril because they weren’t doing their jobs. Conversely, the Avatar Crisis ended when Ao whipped them all back into shape and set out to make them do it correctly, by tying a deity’s power and existence to the number of worshipers that deity had. Without their worshipers, the gods would wither, and after that the uncaring deities who left their worshipers to die (like now-dead Myrkul) were gone or dead soon after. Though it did not last as the rules for Deity conflict allows the winner to take the portfolio's of the loser, encouraging conflict between them for more power when Cyric started stealing tons of portfolios. Eventually resulting in the fiasco called the Spellplague, when Shar and Cyric tried to steal magic from Mystra. The most recent change to Divine Lore was AO deciding to restrict the gods, probably out of frustration. He allowed the revival of many dead gods so he could sort out the portfolios of the gods in a more balanced way. Then he distanced the gods from Toril, vastly restricting their ability to influence the world, except through their followers and portfolios.
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Sep 18, 2019 00:10
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At first I was slightly saddened by this, because the whole Wall of the Faithless thing made sense to me for a good while. The world needs gods to not fall to poo poo and gods need worship in order to exist, therefore the Wall was created in order to encourage, by threat of eternal misery, mortals to worship the gods in order to preserve the world. Now that I think about it, though, it makes no sense as the Wall was created before deities became mortal-dependent due to, from all I can see, the fact that Myrkul is an rear end in a top hat. Therefore, tearing the wall down should mean gently caress all as it was essentially a torture device. I do recall that Kelemvor, after ascending, was put on trial for being too merciful to mortals and giving them good and bad afterlives based on moral behaviour rather than being true to the deity that they worshipped. This makes some sense in terms of maintaining the status quo and the whole "world needs gods, gods need worship" concept, but it still leaves no reason for Kelemvor not to get rid of the wall as it served no purpose than letting Myrkul get his evil rocks off.
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Sep 18, 2019 01:15
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